


It Is in Shedding Grace

by dashery



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Fix-It, Free Will, Gods, Healing, Politics, Screw Destiny, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-07
Updated: 2017-09-08
Packaged: 2018-12-12 11:10:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 14,221
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11735838
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dashery/pseuds/dashery
Summary: “Gentiana?” asked Lunafreya, and then gasped. A single touch from Gentiana’s finger and glittering lace spiraled over the wound—not ice, not cold, but a sort of light that held it in place.YOU GIVE HER TIME,said Leviathan, bemused,AS IF TIME MEANS ANYTHING FOR THIS INFINITESIMAL DUST. HER WRETCHED FLESH ALREADY IS NEARLY SPENT.“I give her the time she needs,” Gentiana answered, rising to face Leviathan without fear, “for I have come to appreciate the passing of years. Of days. Mortal time,” she said, smiling at a Noctis who remained frozen, staring at Lunafreya, “is not so far beyond our grasp.”--Pryna, Prompto, and Gentiana intervene at the Rite of Leviathan and Lunafreya lives to join Noctis's party on their journey. Not only does her presence change things for Noctis, but her connection to the Astrals blows a new path for the Chosen King through the gods' bullshit.Who, after all, has done all thischoosing?A "Lunafreya lives" fix-it fic featuring Prompto shooting Ardyn in the face three times, good dogs, way more Leviathan than you asked for, some Chocobro bonding, and just a glimpse of Gentiana's long game.





	1. Messengers

**Author's Note:**

> This chapter's a little surreal, since it involves the gods pretty heavily, so I hope it's not too confusing. We're diving right in with the events of Chapter 9 that have to change for Luna to make it. Enjoy!

**M.E. 745: Tenebrae**

\--

Lunafreya first chose to love as a political act when she was twelve years old. That, perhaps, is why Gentiana came to her so early.

She arrived the year after Lunafreya's first silent act of war. A year since she’d let her hand slip out of King Regis’s. A year since her mother, the Queen of Tenebrae, blood of the Oracle, flung herself into flame and blade so Ravus might live. It was a year spent in isolation, miserable, kept under house arrest at Fenestala Manor by the soldiers who’d murdered her family, shuttled to lessons of diplomacy and etiquette that meant nothing, less than nothing, falsehoods of power meant to teach her how powerless she was in the hands of the Empire. Lessons she endured for the promise she’d made to Noctis.

The year Gentiana came, she was thirteen.

Because she was thirteen and powerless, the soldiers allowed her a measure of peace. They kept their distance when she visited the sylleblossoms that looked, each one, like her mother, gentle and blue and regal. They reminded her of Noctis, with his wide, trusting eyes when she’d told him he’d been Chosen. She spent as much time among the flowers as possible, reminding herself that already she was following the Oracle's path, ensuring King Regis would escape. That Noctis would grow strong. That she’d done as her mother would have wanted—as her mother had done, protecting her brother. That she’d learned the lesson of her mother’s brief life.

It was summer, now—the height of the sylleblossoms' growth.

It began to snow.

Entranced, Lunafreya held her hands out. The first flake touched her skin and refused to melt.

When she looked, the Imperial guards assigned to her were frozen as well, but not in ice. They stood absolutely motionless, like a drawing in one of her books. Still. Unnatural. Suddenly she realized how quiet it was. Even the breeze had stopped.

She backed away from her guards, but she saw, from the corner of her eye, a woman approaching her through the falling snow. “Daughter of Queens,” she said with a voice like frost over greenery, a silver sheen masking unknowable depths. Lunafreya whirled to face her and the woman stopped, but didn’t kneel. Didn’t bow. Didn’t lower her head—didn’t even open her eyes. The slight curve of her lips, like a red bow, a lacquered weapon, revealed nothing. “Child of the Northern Light.”

Lunafreya stood in place, hardly daring to breathe. The Empire allowed her no weapons, nothing with which she might either defend herself or choose her own fate. Strange snow gathered in her hair and on her sundress and continued not to melt, and her breath steamed before her in the frigid air. She could not approach. But neither did she run.

The woman’s smile deepened, and Lunafreya suddenly became aware of tired lines around her eyes—of pain hidden behind an enigmatic mask. Her hands, folded so elegantly before her, were trembling.

“Are you all right?” asked Lunafreya, shifting forward.

Only then did the stranger incline her head, though the gesture was indulgent and wry. “So speaks the speaker for the Star: with compassion, if less courtesy than one might hope.” She bowed for real, shallow but graceful, and held it for a beat longer than most, as if claiming status greater than Lunafreya’s but according her respect all the same. Her accent was strange in a way Lunafreya couldn’t place. “Greetings upon you, blood of the Oracle. Truly, you shine with your ancestors’ light. I… pray that it will serve you well.”

Frost was gathering on the sylleblossoms in Lunafreya’s arms; spidery patterns flaked off as they fell from her numbing fingers. “Who are you?” she asked, stepping forward.

The woman hesitated—seemed to _ripple,_ like a single ice crystal shivering into water. “I come to you as a messenger,” she finally replied, slowly lowering herself to one knee, “of the Six who know All Creation.”

Lunafreya stopped breathing.

A messenger. No. A Messenger.

“Oh,” she said, the breath of it melting away in the air.

“I come to you,” continued the gods’ Messenger, “to… ask. That you take up your mantle. And heed the Calling of your blood. Now, more than ever, does our Star need its Oracle.”

In the silence, a distant, frozen wind howled, but touched not a single sylleblossom petal. In her veins, in her bones, Lunafreya knew that this encounter was heaven-sent. A whisper from the Astrals. Her body knew it. Her blood.

“Please,” said the woman. “I ask for your help.”

Lunafreya neared enough to touch the woman’s shoulders, to bend before her as the woman had already bent. “You have it,” she said, folding to her knees in the frosted flowers. “All you need do is ask, and I am at your disposal. And that of the gods. That—that is my calling.”

The woman breathed out, opened her clear, dark eyes, and touched Lunafreya’s face with a hand that was, surprisingly, not cold.

“I must go. I am weak, now, to come this far so soon. But for that we met here, in the gardens of your land… call me Gentiana.”

“Gentiana,” Lunafreya repeated, touching the hand on her cheek. “I… I’m afraid. Of not knowing the way.” Her mother was gone. Ravus was consumed with pain. She was alone. “What must I do?”

Gentiana smiled and brushed her thumb over Luna’s cheek, then took one of the flowers that had fallen from Lunafreya’s arms and threaded it into her hair.

“Wait. That is enough, for now. I will be with you soon to guide you on your path to the King of Kings.”

\--

**M.E. 756: Altissia**

\--

This, Lunafreya knew, must be the end of her journey.

Even without the bruising impact of the Tidemother’s outrage, her body was failing her. Already her lungs had felt weak and heavy, near to drowning, after awakening Titan and Ramuh in Lucis. She coughed, and the cough was deep and wet, racking. It was a strange sound in Altissia’s shimmering near-summer.

Then there were footsteps and all she felt was chill.

She’d met High Chancellor Ardyn Izunia a handful of times. By the time of his swift rise through Niflheim’s scientific ranks, she’d already accepted the title of Oracle, was already traveling Eos to spread faith and heal Scourge. But he’d been there at her Ascension. His smile then, as now, as at every political function between, was a cold glimmer in the dark.

“Now… about that ring.”

Today was to have been her wedding day, she thought, bizarrely, as she saw the knife.

\--

Over the roar of water and the Altissians’ panicked screams, Prompto Argentum heard a dog bark.

He was bruised, waterlogged, half-deaf after his ride on the Imperial Speeder, running on terror and adrenaline, and he still turned. There, at the top of the stairs—

“Umbra? Pryna!”

Pryna barked again, noise taken by the shaking of the street, buildings groaning as they threatened to fall, and wagged her tail anxiously. She held it low, dancing on her paws, and Prompto looked to the people he was helping evacuate and back up to the dogs, at their intense, intelligent stares.

“What’s wrong?” he asked. He asked the _dogs._

Pryna barked one more time, started to run down the stairs, but then reversed quickly as a wind-sheared statue crashed into the steps out of nowhere. She hunkered down, whining, and Umbra sat on his haunches and howled. Prompto felt something cold settle in the coils of his guts at the sound. There was the normal, everyday fear of death, that was something he was used to by now, and then there was _fear._

What was happening to Noct? Where was Lady Lunafreya?

“I have to—” he started to say, half-turning to the fleeing Altissians before stopping and looking back up at the sky. What had been an almost unnaturally bright morning felt grey and oppressive now. Leviathan’s shrieks tore almost as deeply at them as her attacks. Prompto considered letting his legs give out and throwing his arms over his head. Discarded the idea as dumb and mostly unhelpful.

“Umbra,” he called instead, peeling away from the crowd. “Can you help them? Get them to safety!”

The dog stood back up, considered him with calm, yellow eyes, and then leaped over the fallen statue like a shadow, so fleet and light-footed. He brushed past Prompto’s legs and then barked at women gathering up their schoolboy sons, at teenagers holding their friends by the shoulders, old men pushing themselves to run.

“Follow him!” ordered Prompto as he vaulted over the statue to Pryna. “He’s with the Oracle!”

He didn’t stop to see if they would listen. He didn’t have time. Pryna wanted him to follow her.

She led him through the broken—through the _breaking_ city, rushing him past arches just before they collapsed, finding him paths over flooded waterways. Floating furniture choked the gondola routes they’d just taken that morning. Prompto was glad it wasn’t bodies. At least, mostly it wasn’t. Hopefully. He didn’t look too closely.

Pryna was taking him closer to the ritual site but not to it; she climbed to higher and higher ground. Soon they were ascending the stairs of a tiered tower, open to the elements. Leviathan screeched once more and the city bucked under Prompto’s feet. He crashed and almost knocked his teeth out on the steps.

Pryna growl-whined and closed he mouth around his glove, trying to tug him forward still. He rose and followed, dazed, and almost tripped right over the Imperial sniper at the top floor of the tower.

Instead he yelped, reared back, and fired before the sniper could switch targets. He must have gotten a lucky shot in. The soldier jerked, slumped, and didn’t move again. Pryna whimpered and scrabbled her way towards the sniper’s setup, whining at Prompto all the while, even as he shuddered and toed the dead Imperial aside. They had a great view of Leviathan from here—beautiful and ineffable in her destructive rampage. He’d thought Altissia the loveliest, most photogenic city he’d ever seen. Now that the goddess reigned screaming death and the powerlessness of man, he still thought that, but in a different way.

“You’re saying I’ll see them through here?” he asked, taking the same position the sniper had before Prompto had so unceremoniously assassinated him. He was peering through the sights before Pryna even answered, a wet weight against his leg.

There. Noct, flat on his back, and Prompto’s breath caught in his throat until he saw his friend’s eyes were open, his face tight but moving through the pain. He exhaled shakily, steadying his hands on the gun once more, and followed Noct’s gaze.

To Lady Lunafreya. To Ardyn. To Ardyn standing over Lunafreya like some dark scavenger bird, oppressive and smug as she coughed on her knees.

Something glinted in Ardyn’s hand.

Time dilated and froze. For a second, Prompto felt every cell of his body go cold from the inside out. If he could breathe, he wouldn’t have been surprised to see it puff and mist out of him like this single shattered fragment of Accordo were dipped in the arctic outerlands.

Then it was over, and he could feel the trigger beneath his finger once more.

“ _Nuh_ -uh,” he growled. And pulled.

\--

The knife plunged towards her and Ardyn’s head burst open.

She gasped as the blade tore flesh and cloth, at first a numbness and then a sting and then a white-burning rending in her side, but Ardyn fell, too, pressing a hand to the side of his head with a surprised, guttural noise. Almost as an afterthought, she registered a loud crack—not stone, not metal, but fire in the barrel of a gun.

Ardyn hissed and turned from her, searching the heights for the shooter, but there was another _CRACK_ and this time his cheek exploded, sticky and black. He shouted again—how?—and stumbled backwards, shielding his face with his hand.

Lunafreya thought in the distance she could hear Pryna bark.

 _CRACK._ A third shot blew through his shoulder and he spun, staggering. _CRACK._ It hit high in his chest, his throat, almost, but Ardyn planted his feet, glaring high above Lunafreya’s head towards the battered towers of Altissia, and snarled. It was not a human sound.

For a beat, nothing happened, and Lunafreya was afraid for the shooter.

Then Ardyn’s eye socket erupted with a fifth, final _CRACK,_ and he toppled over the railing towards the raging waters below.

Clutching her wound, Lunafreya tried to rise to see if he was gone—if he was dead—but Leviathan roared once more. Noctis. Noctis needed her.

Her hands found her trident once more and sound faded. Sight went soft and white at the edges. The waterspouts froze, walls and buildings suspended mid-air. Only Leviathan moved, and it was to whip her head around, attention drawn from Noctis as if yanked by the bit.

 ** _YOU,_** she roared in a waterfall’s voice, all inexorable power, but did not attack.

“Gentiana,” panted Lunafreya, holding herself up against the Trident of the Oracle.

Gentiana smiled down at her, enigmatic and indulgent, and came to stand beside her—to kneel, one light hand on her back, one reaching, gently, like a feather or a flake of snow, towards Lunafreya’s wound. She drew Lunafreya’s bloody hand away from it and her smile did not change.

 ** _I SHOULD HAVE SEEN YOUR PATHETIC HAND IN THIS._** Somehow, Leviathan’s voice was lower, undertow and in-drawn tides. Her eyes were furious, but she held the length of herself still, only the end of her tail waving. **_YOU WOULD INTERVENE HERE? IN MY WATERS? FOOL! YOUR POWERS ARE AS NOTHING NOW. YOU YOURSELF ARE NOTHING—HARDLY MORE THAN THIS IGNORANT HEAP OF ROT THAT WOULD SPEAK TO ME OF 'KINGS.'_**

“Shh,” murmured Gentiana before pressing lips to Lunafreya’s brow. “You have done well, Oracle. Despair not—but do not give in. You have not yet reached the end of your path.”

“Gentiana?” asked Lunafreya, and then gasped. A single touch from Gentiana’s finger and glittering lace spiraled over the wound—not ice, not cold, but a sort of light that held it in place.

 ** _YOU GIVE HER TIME,_** said Leviathan, bemused, **_AS IF TIME MEANS ANYTHING FOR THIS INFINITESIMAL DUST. HER WRETCHED FLESH ALREADY IS NEARLY SPENT._**

“I give her the time she needs,” Gentiana answered, rising to face Leviathan without fear, “for I have come to appreciate the passing of years. Of days. Mortal time,” she said, smiling at a Noctis who remained frozen, staring at Lunafreya, “is not so far beyond our grasp.”

Leviathan, in all her indomitable, ineffable glory, made a dubious sound with the voice of an ocean storm. **_NOT BEYOND. BENEATH. THE THOUGHT DISGUSTS ME. YOU DISGUST ME,_** she said, lowering her great, serpentine head. **_WHAT HAS BECOME OF YOU, WHO WAS ONCE WINTER’S HEART?_**

Gentiana? Lunafreya wasn’t sure the name left her mouth. Summoning Leviathan already had taken all her strength. Her powers were weakening.

“Perhaps,” Gentiana said, inclining her head, “I am yet the single one of us who sees brevity’s beauty.”

 ** _BEAUTY IS POWER,_** corrected Leviathan. **_BEAUTY LASTS AS POWER DOES._**

Gentiana smiled. “As you say.” She turned back to Lunafreya, the light at her back, Leviathan before her. “Oracle. Continue the rite. Your Chosen King has need of you still, if he is to seal this Covenant and return the Light to our star.”

Like frost evaporating beneath the sun, Gentiana vanished, and Lunafreya hurried to lift her Trident as Leviathan, keening with insult, turned on Noctis once more.

\--

Prompto let the rifle drop from his nerveless fingers. Pryna shoved her head into his hands, whining as they shook in her fur. He pulled her close and tried to muffle his own whimpers as Noct rose, bursting with the Light of his fathers, to finish the Hydraean. He buried his face in her neck as his heart threatened to hammer right out through his throat and the scene replayed itself at the backs of his eyes.

Ardyn, trying to stab Lady Lunafreya as she lay helpless on the flagstone platform. Ardyn, who kept moving with two bullets in his head.

Ardyn, who looked right at him through the rifle’s sights with black malevolence bleeding from his eyes.

Gulping down the gross, comforting reek of wet dog, Prompto whispered, “What _was_ that?”

Pryna only licked his neck and whined softly in his ear.

\--

The creak of earth and the roar of waves gave way to white, and to blue.

“Luna.”

She loved that voice. A child’s voice, shorn of all courtesy and diplomacy to leave only that rare honesty. A voice like the color of sylleblossoms, one with feathered edges like her favorite flowers when it laughed. She felt her lips pull up in a smile, but she couldn’t open her eyes yet. Not yet.

“Luna, wake up. Come on. I need you.”

“Noctis,” she mumbled, intending to sound reproachful, but the words stirred something in her throat. Tendrils of cold snaked their way into her dream, and she closed her fists fitfully, weakly, in the dirt.

His breath shuddered out of him. “Please? Luna, I’m scared.”

She opened her eyes.

At first, all she could see were the flowers of Tenebrae, blowing softly in the gentle breeze of her homeland. They rose above her head, reaching towards a flat grey sky. As she stared, small flecks of white floated down to land on her cheeks.

They melted, ran like tears. It was snowing.

Noctis crouched above her, one shaking arm planted to either side of her, soft and young. His brow was knotted with worry. Why had she told this boy he would be the Chosen King? There were lighter curses to bear, she knew now. She reached up and brushed his cheek and found her own hand small and pliant.

“Don’t be afraid,” she told him in her own child voice.

He lowered his head to her shoulder, let his slender body rest on top of hers, shielding her from the cold. “Then don’t go,” he said, pressing the warmth of his face into her neck. “You promised you’d—you’d be there for me.”

“Noctis,” she started, but he pushed himself up again, and the lines of his face were different. Longer. Defiant. A man’s face, but the eyes were the same, and they looked at her with both a boy’s imploring and a king’s demand.

“Forget that,” he said. “Be _here_ with me, Luna. The Prophecy… the Chosen King… I don’t care about any of that.”

“Noctis,” she said again, and she heard the change in her own voice. Lower. Older. Here, bracketed on either side by his arms, at rest in the field of flowers, warmed and protected by the heat of his body, she felt the pain creep into her own voice as she slid her hand from his face to his chest. “Noctis, I… you must. I cannot. Already, my flesh has…”

“Don’t wanna hear it,” he said, but she shook her head, feeling an ache deep in her stomach. She pulled her other hand from the ground and opened it so he could see the Ring of the Lucii.

“Take it,” she begged him. “Take it, Noctis, and see my prayers fulfilled. You must answer your own calling. Noctis, please…”

All around them, the winds grew stronger, whipping the flowers into a frenzy. Blue petals danced through the frozen air, and her weak, sobbing breaths rose like mist among them. But even as frost grew along Noctis’s hair and clothes, his eyes did not change.

She pushed the ring towards his chest and he took her hand instead.

“You say I'm chosen,” he said, pressing her palm to his heart. She felt the ring there, weight pushed into her skin, into his shirt, his warmth. “But, Luna.

“What I choose is you.”

\--

She woke in a bed, silk sheets raised to her collarbone, hair splayed out on a pillow. Light streamed in through the windows, across the mattress, across her face. She breathed in softly, made an even softer sound.

She woke. She’d lived.

Someone gasped, and there were footprints beyond her field of vision, someone kneeling at her side. “Lady Lunafreya,” chirped a voice she didn’t know. “You’re—you back with us?”

Her mouth was dry. She couldn’t move. A sharp pain pushed through the dullness of her body, radiating from her side, and there was a strange weight pressing down on one of her hands, but she breathed in and the air—that warm, sun-blessed air of Accordo—felt good in her weakend lungs.

She’d _lived._

Lunafreya blinked once, turning her head oh so slightly towards the figure at her side, who bounced to his feet, relief bursting out of him with a weak, incredulous laugh.

“I’ll tell the others! You just sit tight there, um.” Gloved hands twisted together before him, like he couldn’t remember the proper form of address, and then he was darting away without giving it. “I’ll be right back! Don't worry! Take care of Noct for me!”

Slowly, as if moving in a dream, Lunafreya turned her head to the other side.

Tucked in as she was, the covers falling from his shoulder, was curled Noctis Lucis Caelum, the King of Kings, sleeping like a child at her side. One hand lay half-closed beneath his chin, and the blankets rose and fell softly with his breathing, untroubled and even. Umbra had wedged himself into the bend behind his knees. Pryna lay between the two of them, her head on Luna’s thigh. Her tail thumped the bed and she whined quietly.

Between her and Noctis’s joined hands beneath the covers, Lunafreya could feel the heavy circle of the Ring of the Lucii.

She’d lived, and the man she’d chosen at twelve years old to love lay beside her, holding her like she was what he’d come to receive rather than a goddess’s blessing.

Her sight wavered like ice blurring into water, and she closed her eyes and could think of no prayer to offer but _Thank you._


	2. In Leviathan's Wake

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the past, the young Oracle dunks on Ravus Nox Fleuret. In the present, Lunafreya meets Gladiolus and Prompto, Noctis sucks at diplomacy, the five make plans to head north, and Prompto bombs Twenty Questions against a blind man.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was originally two chapters I smushed into one, then had to separate out again because it got too dang long. Enjoy some more Chocobros!

**M.E. 748: Tenebrae**

\--

The youngest Oracle in history sat at her vanity, searched her reflection in the mirror, and found no trace of her mother’s wisdom within it, whether she put on her mask of smiling beatitude or let it fade. Sixteen, and she felt so tired. Lunafreya folded into herself, though her tutors would hate how she pulled her knees into her chest, letting loose hair fall around her shoulders. So unladylike. So unbefitting her station.

“You did well, Oracle.”

She looked up to find Gentiana wrapping a light blanket around her, sighed, and put her head back down.

“…Were you there, at the ceremony? I didn’t chance to see you there,” said Lunafreya, keeping her voice studiously blank.

Gentiana chuckled as if neither the accusation nor its transparency bothered her and stroked Lunafreya’s hair. “I was not,” she admitted. Lunafreya lifted her eyes, but the Messenger seemed unconcerned, taking a brush from the vanity without so much as cracking her eyes open.

“I was hoping you would,” Lunafreya finally said as Gentiana worked, trying not to sound like she was sulking. Without that bite, though, she just sounded lonely to her own ears.

“A man was there,” said Gentiana with all due patience, “I wished not to see. Or rather, I wished he not see me.”

Lunafreya let a beat of silence pass. “Really?” she asked, watching the woman in the mirror.

Gentiana opened her eyes in a brief, conspiratorial smile more wicked than her wont. “I have surprised you,” she noted, continuing to brush. “You think I do not speak with anyone but you?”

“I’ve seen you speak to Ravus.” Lunafreya leaned back to try to look at Gentiana upside-down. “Are you avoiding Ravus?”

“No,” she replied, tilting Lunafreya’s head forward once more.

“I wouldn’t blame you if you were.”

Gentiana smiled brilliantly then, laughed—and Lunafreya felt the best she had all day. Her Ascension, walking slowly through the crowds with the Trident held awkwardly in front of her with skinny arms, serenity plastered on her face, hadn’t felt like a ritual so much as a dog show. Here she was, the Empire’s prize Tenebraean spitz, put through her paces for the judges, and wasn’t she perfectly bred?

She shook her head, brushed her growing-out bangs from her eyes, and put on her most winsome smile. “Are you sure you won’t tell me, Gentiana? We’ve known each other so long. You can trust me.”

“Ah. It has been long, for you?” Gentiana leaned forward to set the brush down and gathered Luna’s hair into sections.

“It’s been three years, Gentiana,” Luna replied as her one companion began to braid her hair for bed. “And still I know so little about you.”

The woman hummed to herself, her hands slow and familiar in Lunafreya’s hair. “Three years,” she repeated, and the words sounded strange in Gentiana’s mouth, as if they were foreign names. She sighed, shaking her head with an equally strange, faint smile. “I forget how young you are.”

Lunafreya’s smile faded. “Oh. Is that so?”

“A blink of an eye seems to you a lifetime,” said Gentiana, tying off the end of Lunafreya’s braid, “and to me, each time I look, you have grown beyond my expectations. Let me see you now.”

At the request, Lunafreya turned, and Gentiana tried, and failed, to tuck those irksome bangs behind her ear.

“So very, very young,” she murmured and kissed Luna’s brow like a benediction, “to ask me to talk of men. Another time, perhaps, Oracle. For now, you must rest.”

\--

**M.E. 756: Altissia, two days after the Rite of Leviathan**

\--

The youngest Oracle in history lay propped like a child’s doll on Altissian pillows and wondered how much time she had left.

She’d lived, yes. Chancellor Izunia’s aim had been thrown, and what would have pierced her fatally instead skittered aside, leaving a red, ugly wound across her stomach and side that left her organs untouched. She’d lost blood, but a hurried transfusion left her no more than fatigued as far as that went.

But she’d called three gods to the King’s Covenant. Her bodily weakness could not—would not—improve.

The first two days, every time she woke to find Noctis slumbering at her side, her vision swam with tears of both guilt and gratitude. He was here. He was a living, solid presence right next to her, familiar warmth against her skin. All she’d wanted these long twelve years was a little more time with him, one more chance to hear his voice, to watch his eyes light up over a picture book or a joke they couldn’t tell their parents.

Their _parents._

As she watched Noctis sleep, his head pillowed on her shoulder, she remembered the last look King Regis had given her: the twelve years of apology, sorrow, understanding, regret, and urging on in the lines of his face—the look he’d given her still as he fell, as if even death could not stay his need to convey everything he felt.

They’d understood each other, she and King Regis, without words, for words were a luxury hardly afforded them, two royals bound to their public faces. He couldn’t write her in secret as Noctis did. He could speak to her only through action, as she once had, letting her hand slip from his—as she had time and time again in the years since, to let him know she would not falter in her duty.

She had never once doubted he would in his, and he had not. 

Now, here she was, in Altissia as he’d hoped, the ring passed to his son, her duty fulfilled; here she was, lying next to the man whose father’s final moments she’d unwittingly, unintentionally stolen. Everything that had been his, she’d seen fall down all around her, unable to stop the tide of war.

“Noctis,” she whispered, smoothing down his dark hair as he slept. “I am sorry. So sorry.”

They were both of them orphans now. Throneless monarchs. The palaces of their ancestors lay under dust and rubble, their people lost to them. Umbra flicked his ears, but did not stir until they both heard voices in the hall.

“—sure you should be bouncing around like that so soon?”

“Come on, I’m fine! It takes, like, a day for it all to come back.” Hushed: “Now shut up, dude, what if they’re sleep—oh.”

Pryna sat up and wagged her tail as the door opened to a slim blond man and a veritable mountain behind him. The smaller stopped short in the doorway so that the mountain nearly tripped over him.

“Prompto,” he rumbled, but stopped.

“…Eeh, uh,” stammered the other.

Color rose in his cheeks, and Lunafreya realized Noctis slept, still, in the crook of her arm. For a moment, she considered being as embarrassed as they looked.

Instead she smiled, letting exhaustion seep into the lines of her face, and simply let her hand drop away from his hair. She knew these boys, had read about them for over twelve years. Surely Noctis’s dearest friends could not fault him his lack of decorum if she needed the closeness as much as he did. “Prompto,” she repeated, and then, looking behind him, “and Gladiolus. Is that right?”

On cue, Gladiolus lifted a meaty hand to his chest and bowed. “Got it in one, Lady Lunafreya,” he said, and only then did Prompto catch on and rush to offer the same gesture, bending much deeper. Gladiolus straightened and assumed a formal soldier’s pose. “Guessing the prince must have told you about us.”

“A bit, over these twelve years,” she said, watching Prompto scramble to copy Gladiolus’s posture. Her smile deepened. “Perhaps more than a bit. He wrote often of what was important to him, after all.”

The two of them shifted, though not unpleasantly. They were almost like embarrassed schoolboys. It lightened her heart. “Come,” she told them, patting the bed, and Pryna moved to the edge of the bed to pant and wag her tail beguilingly. “I’m sure we all know we needn’t worry about waking Noctis, and I’ve wanted to meet you all for so very long.”

She wasn’t sure if it was the subtle joke at Noctis’s expense or Pryna’s encouragement, but the invitation was apparently enough for Prompto. He swung his arms nervously but came right up to the side of the bed, kneeling and then laughing in surprise as Pryna gave his face a friendly licking. “Pryna, gross!” he complained as Gladiolus entered as well, closing the door behind him and moving to a nearby chair. It was positioned, Lunafreya noted, to give him a view of both the bed and the door. Umbra watched them and then put his head down with a huff, content to be relieved of guard duty for the moment.

“Sorry to saddle you with His Sleepiness.” Gladiolus shrugged in Noctis’s direction. “Easier to keep a low profile with you two in the same room and us coming and going. …And you were hard to separate once we found you.”

“I understand,” she said, and at the same time Prompto asked, “How are you doing?”

He was watching her intently, fingers buried in Pryna’s fur. When she met his gaze, he ducked his head, clearing his throat and continuing to scratch beneath Pryna’s chin. “You looked—you looked really bad there, for a while. Noct, too, but…”

She should be dead. Knife wound or not, the remaining three of the Six—Shiva, Ifrit, and Bahamut—not even the Oracle could, or should, attempt to call to the near plane. Her ailing, weakened body… What purpose could it now serve?

But Lunafreya smiled diplomatically, kindly, gratefully for Noctis’s dearest friend. “I am… well,” she lied, for what else could she do for such a man? She remembered the kindness of a boy from years before. Prompto turned her way again and she laughed, as if he’d caught her, and held a hand out for Pryna. “More well than I could rightly expect, given the circumstances.”

Pryna glanced at her, but without turning her head, and closed her eyes as Prompto’s hands continued to ruffle through her thick fur. Ah, so this was betrayal.

Gladiolus shifted in his chair. “Prompto said Ardyn’s the one who did that to you.”

Prompto froze. At her side, Noctis stirred. She placed a hand on his head and he settled again, but his brow remained creased in a frown. Umbra growled without lifting his head.

“Yes,” she answered softly.

“Any idea why the Chancellor’d do a thing like that?”

 _Oh, Prince! Your bride awaits!_ Lunafreya breathed in and felt the pained pull in her side, the sickness in her lungs.

“To hurt Noctis,” she said, meeting Gladiolus’s stone-steady gaze with her own. “Though I couldn’t say what he could expect to gain from my death. Chancellor Izunia’s greater motivations for anything he does have long eluded my understanding.”

“Huh.” Gladiolus smiled, a thin expression that nonetheless warmed his face. He seemed tired, Lunafreya noted with a pang. Deeply, painfully worn. “Ours, too.”

Prompto swallowed. “Y-yeah. He… sure is a strange one.”

Gladiolus shot his friend a look, but Prompto wasn’t looking at either of them.

“I’m telling you, Prompto, you shot him five times. He ain’t coming back,” said Gladiolus with the slow, measured tone of a man who wasn’t sure why he had to say this every five minutes.

But before either of them could answer, Noctis made a soft, strained noise, starting to stir away from her only to bring himself up short, grimacing.

“Noct?” Prompto held himself ramrod-straight.

“Gh…” His arm twitched against her side and he inhaled through clenched teeth, like even that much movement hurt.

Already, Gladiolus was rising. “Noct. You with us?”

“Give him a moment,” Lunafreya told him, then said, softer, for she almost wouldn’t wake him at all, “Noctis?”

Blessed stars. He opened his eyes.

“Luna,” he said, and his voice was the world to her. A girlhood name in the mouth of a man, husky and worn, so familiar in cadence.

She smiled like her heart was bursting and nodded, and that confused, uncertain frown melted into something gentler, wondering, deeply thankful. She didn’t have time to think about what it meant for then he glanced behind her, and his eyes shifted like the shimmering lights at Tenebrae’s northernmost point, tenderness flickering into surprise and concern. “Guys.”

“Morning, bud,” Prompto greeted him with a little laugh, a wave from around Pryna.

“Welcome back to the land of the living,” said Gladiolus, crossing his arms with a nod. He sounded relieved, but something else dragged down his shoulders and the corners of his eyes. “You doin’ okay?”

“Am I doing…” he repeated slowly, raising a hand haltingly to his face, wincing as it stretched sore and battered muscles. “How do you think I’m doing? Feels like Leviathan dropped the whole city on me.”

Prompto let Pryna hop over to nose at Noctis, who tried weakly to brush her off. “That _is_ pretty much exactly what happened, dude. I’m surprised you and Lady Lunafreya can even move.”

Noctis looked up sharply at that, intensity catching her by surprise. “Luna?”

She breathed out and let her smile soften. “I’m all right, Noctis. You bore the brunt of the Hydraean’s ordeal, not I.”

“Yeah, but I didn’t get…” he started hotly, but stopped when she touched his face. Once more, his eyes met hers, dark and searching, and she wondered what he saw in hers.

Gladiolus cleared his throat.

Moving faster than she’d thought his stiffened body would allow, Noctis realized where he was and jumped halfway across the bed. Without missing a beat, Umbra slid into the warm spot he left behind, curling under Lunafreya's arm and huffing smugly.

Prompto snickered weakly, and as Noctis glared at him, then took in Gladiolus’s complicated expression, something dawned on him.

“Where’s Iggy?”

\--

Prompto led Noctis by the shoulder to the room where Ignis was resting. The dogs went with them, Pryna at Prompto’s heels, Umbra herding them from behind. Gladiolus followed, but slower, as if weights held his legs.

“Gladiolus?” Lunafreya prompted when he lingered at the door.

“…Oracle,” he said, then finally lifted his eyes to meet hers. “You’re a healer, right?”

Oh. She’d been afraid of this. Her hand fell to her stomach, to the line newly carved in her flesh. “Yes. I am.”

“Could you,” he started. Stopped. He sighed heavily, fists clenching at his sides, and shook his head. “It isn’t right to ask, not when you’re healing up yourself. But could you… I dunno. If you just look, do you think you might be able to…”

She waited, then touched the bed once more, inviting him wordlessly to sit. He did, sinking heavily into the edge of the mattress, elbows on his knees and shoulders bowed.

“It’s his eyes,” he said, as if the world had already ended and he was left to be the bearer of bad news.

Lunafreya put a hand on one powerful arm and wished, not for the first time, she’d been blessed with strength equal to the need she found in the world. “Gladiolus.”

“Don’t say you’re sorry if you can’t.” His eyes were a steady, warm brown in a face scarred beyond his years. There were more lines now at the corners than she remembered from even Noctis’s most recent pictures. Pain wore so many different masks. “Save your sympathies for those who need it, Highness.”

“Then I will not,” she agreed while seeing all of that need in him, this twenty-three-year-old boy sworn to be unbreakable for his king. “And I… cannot.” This was harder. “If he has indeed sustained a wound beyond the abilities of the Altissian physicians, then I’m afraid it will likely prove beyond my powers as Oracle as well. Particularly… particularly now, as weakened as I am.”

In the wake of the rite, she was powerless. And her life was already nearly spent. Completely spent, she’d thought.

Gladiolus closed his eyes and nodded. “He says it’s a matter of time. Iggy. That we’ll have to wait and see.”

She was too weak to squeeze his arm, so she rubbed it gently. “My prayers will be with him.”

It won her a wry smile. “Damn. Not everyone gets the Oracle rooting for them personally.”

“You have all supported me and Noctis this long. What sort of friend would I be to offer nothing in return?” Gladiolus snorted, and she tried to sit up straighter against the pillows. “Was anyone else hurt?”

“We got the Altissians out safe and sound, for the most part. A few bumps and bruises here and there.” He shifted when she did and got one mountainous arm around her, easing her upright as if she weighed nothing. The gesture reminded her of Nyx, so thoughtlessly helpful.

“And your group?” she pressed on, putting the sorrow out of mind. “You and Prompto. You’re all right?”

“Like I said. Bumps and bruises.” He was watching her oddly, then shook his head at a thought she wasn’t privy to and tapped her arm. “In good enough condition to make a donation, even.”

She blinked up at him.

Gladiolus had a good smile, weathered as it was. “Your veins needed a loan after the hit you took, and the hospitals didn’t have a lot of support in the chaos. Turns out your blood type’s rare in southern parts.” He waved at where her IV had fed in the day before. “Hate to break it to you, but you’re stuck with Argentum goods for the time being.”

“Argentum… That’s Prompto?” The transfusion she’d received was his? And hadn’t he been the shooter, too? That's what Gladiolus's earlier words implied. Disbelieving, she covered a weak laugh, and tried to blink away the stinging in her eyes before he saw.

From the understanding tilt of his smile, she must have failed, but he didn’t bring it up. “Don’t worry. We don’t think his dorkiness is contagious.”

She let her hand fall away from his arm and brushed her hair back from her face. Strange, speaking to others with it loose like she’d worn it as a child. “Noctis was right. You are all simply too kind.”

“Huh. Wouldn’t hear it from him.” Gladiolus kept watching her, then said, “Hey. When you’re up to sitting for a while... ask for me. All right?”

She didn’t know how to read the expression on his face. “I… yes, of course, if there’s something you need. But…?”

He rose and rubbed the back of his neck.

“You’ve usually got someone doing your hair for you, right? Being an actual princess and all.”

Gentiana, sometimes. Usually Maria. “I… yes. For public occasions, so more often than not, yes.”

Gladiolus shrugged his massive shoulders. “Well, I’ve got a little sister. Been providing stylist support to a picky teenager for years. If you could use a hand, Lady Lunafreya, I’m the man for the job.”

Once, her brother had been young enough, uninjured enough, to help braid flowers into her hair. Once, Nyx Ulric offered her an ornament that proved as fatal as it was beautiful and returned it to her after making it safe once more—just as he had the Ring. Just as he had her life.

A tear threatened to spill over the curve of her cheek, but what could the Oracle offer, now, but a smile?

“I would like that very much. Thank you, Gladiolus.”

“Gladio.” He returned her smile with the broad, worn warmth of his own. “Everyone calls me Gladio.”

“Then, please.” She held out her hand, and his palm engulfed hers. “Let me be Luna, with the four of you.”

\--

**M.E. 756: Altissia, five days after the Rite of Leviathan**

\--

“Lady Lunafreya,” said First Secretary Claustra. “Prince Noctis. I’ve come to find out what it is you plan to do from here on out.” She turned from the window ruefully. “Now that you’ve destroyed half my capital city.”

Noctis nodded brusquely, chastised, and Lunafreya inclined her head more graciously, seated beside him as he stood. “We will neither forget the sacrifice you have made,” she said, “nor the fear and pain of Altissia’s citizens. Accordo’s generosity towards Lucis and Tenebrae is a blessing we have not earned, not in light of the destruction wreaked by our actions. It is a debt we must repay in any way we can.”

“Pretty words.” Secretary Claustra gave Noctis a look. “She’s much better at this than you are, Your Majesty.”

His lips twitched. “No surprise there.”

They were meeting in the suite that served her and Noctis as a recovery room. Lunafreya was still too weak to walk, but Gladiolus—Gladio—had lifted her effortlessly into a chair, had pulled her hair into a high, simple braid. He stood now at the door, arms behind his back, chin high. Every inch a soldier.

Secretary Claustra was all business with her suit and crisp expression. Lunafreya herself was the weakened, but dauntless Oracle, pale but regal in a pale blue gown, her wounds hidden but still known to all in the room. All her life she’d learned to wield weakness as a political weapon; Secretary Claustra was no stranger to that.

And Noctis stood in the middle of the room dressed in black, dark-haired, and though the clothes were his battle-worn fatigues, though he had his arms crossed like a teenager might, he had power. He stood not like a politician but a warrior, a wild king of legend. This boy she’d last seen at eight years old commanded the room like the memory of ancient rulers, stirring up the old stories in her blood.

She and Noctis had read them together as children.

Secretary Claustra nodded, approving, and took a seat across from Lunafreya. Weskham Armaugh came up behind her, like an unofficial retainer.

“Then Lady Lunafreya, let’s start with you. We’ll allow the King of Lucis a minute to find some pretty words of his own.”

Lunafreya nodded. “Very well.”

“First of all, you’re probably not going anywhere for a while. At least, not if you listen to the doctors. And Altissian doctors know what they're doing.”

“Indeed. I owe them a great debt. My life is not a matter I take lightly.” Lunafreya brushed a hand over her wound, freshly examined and bandaged, and allowed herself the moment of vulnerability. “I would do well, of course, to listen to them.”

Claustra was no fool. “But?”

She clasped her hands in her lap. “But the longer I am here, the longer I put this city and all who dwell within its walls at risk.”

It was the secretary’s turn to incline her head. “You’re aware that the High Commander of Niflheim’s army is looking for you.”

“I am aware,” Lunafreya agreed, “that Ravus will leave no stone unturned as long as my fate remains unclear. And that, should he hear I am once again in your custody, he will act to seize me immediately—and if not he, then another arm of the Empire.”

“Not happening,” Noctis snapped.

“Learn to take turns,” Secretary Claustra reminded him. “Altissia’s seen more than enough battle for the moment, Your Majesty. I can’t afford to have the High Commander sweeping in here to dig his wayward sister from your rebellious clutches.”

He grunted. “Then what do you suggest we do?”

“I’m still talking to the Oracle. You two aren’t wed yet. Don’t presume to speak for her.”

Lunafreya put a hand on Noctis’s arm and he settled, though nerves thrummed through him. Secretary Claustra was too sharp for his comfort, though she could see something like respect between them. “Am I correct to believe that, because Ravus is not, in fact, tearing me from Noctis’s grasp at this very moment, you have not informed the Empire I yet live?”

Claustra steepled her fingers. “Your current status is ‘missing.’ We haven’t found your body, so there’s hope for you still.”

“Hope,” she repeated, sighing and leaning back in her chair. “Yes. That is the heart of the issue, is it not?”

Noctis glanced at her. “Luna?” he asked quietly.

“I’m the Oracle, Noctis.” She opened her hands and laid them, palm-up, in her lap. “There is none after me. What will happen to the people in need of my bloodline’s gifts, should they believe me to have perished in Altissia without an heir?”

“So,” he started, but stopped himself before he could ask the disastrous _so what?_ in the Secretary's presence. “So they’ll get along without you,” he continued lamely, “like they did when… before you became the Oracle.” After her mother died. Noctis’s jaw worked. “You can’t go back to the Empire, not when Ardyn—I won’t let you.”

“Your Majesty,” interrupted Claustra, annoyed.

Lunafreya raised her hand and they both subsided. “It is not upon Accordo to suffer for my well-being,” she said slowly. “Nor should Altissia be subject to harassment by my brother’s troops. The measure of independence you have from the Empire is not one I’d see compromised on my account.”

Secretary Claustra nodded. “Yes. So?”

She took a breath to steady herself, pressing her hands together palm to palm. “…Inform the searchers that I have passed. Perhaps… perhaps a strip of fabric from the dress I was wearing will suffice, if it is found in the water. Even the Empire has no way to shift the rubble that sank below.”

The odds were low the Empire would have let her continue her work, in any case. Nor would her health. Noctis said nothing but pressed a grounding hand to her shoulder.

“A prudent decision, Oracle.” Claustra turned to Weskham Armaugh, who nodded and left her side. She returned her gaze to Lunafreya, no less hard-lined. “Which leads me to my next question: Where do you intend to go from here?”

“I…”

She had not believed she would live this long. Her calling, in both senses of the word, was done. Her body was failing. Her wounds would heal, but it was only a matter of time before her flesh gave out. Where could she go, _former_ princess, on the run from her only family, a fugitive from the Empire?

Noctis’s thumb ran soothingly over the silk of her gown. There had been, once, a time when their positions were reversed. When she was the one standing by his chair, asking him where he wanted to go so she could bring him there.

“I would like,” she heard herself say distantly, as if recalling a dream, “to return to Tenebrae for a time.”

She would like to go home.

“…Risky,” said Secretary Claustra, and the look on her face made Lunafreya wonder if the woman had children. “But understandable. And once news of your death spreads, they may not be checking the borders there quite as vigilantly.”

Lunafreya bowed her head and said nothing. She had nowhere else to go, after all.

“I'd advise caution, but that choice is yours to make. What about you, King of Lucis?”

Noctis had eyes only for Lunafreya, his hand still on her shoulder.

“We’re on our way north, once Iggy’s better,” he said, as if discussing spring weekend plans rather than a raid on the Empire's capital. “We’ll be swinging right through Tenebrae. Let us drop you off.”

\--

While the others met with Secretary Claustra and discussed matters of state, Ignis sat.

Noctis had asked him to rest, and as Lunafreya would be there to keep him in check, Ignis hadn’t argued his dismissal. In his room, though, he could do nothing. He could not read up on what was happening in the world. He couldn’t go over their supplies, restock their curatives. He couldn’t work. He couldn’t cook.

All he could do was listen to the familiar tinny jingle of King’s Knight and Prompto’s ceaseless shifting about.

Strangely, the noise made the dim blankness of the world easier to bear. He could tell where Prompto was sitting—the chair kitty-corner from his, Lunafreya’s dogs curled at his feet. He could imagine exactly how he was sitting, one leg pulled up across his knee, craning this way or that as if that would help him dodge enemies. He could hear each displeased, distressed noise Prompto made. It seemed he was doing poorly.

Ignis could no longer play. The last time, when had it been? At a caravan somewhere within Lucian borders. A different life.

“Hey, um. Ignis,” said Prompto, startling him.

The sound of King’s Knight continued. Not a serious conversation, then. “Yes?”

“How, uh.” No wonder he was losing so badly, if he was this distracted. Cotton rustled as he shifted again in his seat. “How sure are we about, you know. The Six?”

This was not at all the question Ignis expected. “I… beg pardon?”

“Like, how sure are we that there’s six? I mean, _only_ six.” The sole of his shoe scuffed shortly through the carpet. Switching crossed legs. “What if there was this… seventh one nobody knew about? You know, immortal, like them, with all their powers. But, like. Dark.”

“A seventh member of the _Hex_ atheon,” Ignis summarized, speaking slowly, “that no one, in all recorded history, has heard of?”

He could picture Prompto hunching in and ducking his head. “It’s stupid, huh.”

This wasn’t the sort of thing Prompto would ask without reason. Ignis hesitated before answering. “I am no expert in matters of cosmogony.” Or blasphemy, he didn’t add. “Your question is better suited for The Oracle. I’m sure Lady Lunafreya would be happy to answer any questions you have about the beings with whom she communes.”

“Aha. Right.”

Silence then, except for the sound of Ray Jack the Warrior perishing in the fight against Tolfidan once more.

Ignis sat up straighter and adjusted his now-tinted lenses. “What brought this line of questioning on?”

“Nothing,” Prompto replied quickly. Ignis stared as well as he could, and he could feel his friend wither. “Just… stuff. Seeing the Astrals in action. Thinking about the forces that govern our star. Like anyone would, caught up in the business of saving the world.”

“Hmm,” said Ignis, unconvinced.

“I’ll ask Lady Lunafreya,” Prompto promised before setting his phone down on the table between them with a quiet clack. “Hey, why don’t we play a game instead while we wait for them? Twenty questions. You can guess first.”

It was the clumsiest dodge Ignis had ever witnessed, and he’d seen Prompto make some clumsy ones. Back when he could see. “If you insist,” he said, filing the conversation away to analyze later. He’d discover what, exactly, Prompto had seen in the last few days to make him question everything man knew about the world.

Noct and Gladio returned to Prompto insisting that a Tonberry wouldn’t be bigger than a breadbox if it were a baby, against a very firm lecture on everything Ignis knew about daemon reproduction. I.e., that they did not. Reproduce, that is.

It was the first time he heard Noct laugh, if quietly, in his presence since the rite of the Hydraean.


	3. The Healing of Wounds

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As they continue to recuperate in Altissia, Noct, Luna, and Prompto go on a picnic while Gladio and Ignis work some shit out.

**M.E. 756: Altissia, three weeks later**

It was different, having Luna around.

The guys were different. He was different. Gladio sheathed his raw edges when Luna drifted by, spoke softer and almost had a sense of humor. With Luna there to ease tensions, it didn’t hurt as much when Ignis tried to act like everything was normal, like he was fine. Prompto—well, Prompto was Prompto. He fell all over himself like he did around any girl, hung on her every word.

Noct was just glad Luna was alive.

It helped dilute the guilt every time he looked at the scars across Ignis’s eyes. Eased the churning in his gut when he saw his oldest friend pat at the table before him for a fork or a napkin, when Gladio had to help him even out the buttons on his shirt. Luna’d made it, and it helped. Luna was getting better.

Things still weren’t good, but if he didn’t hold onto something, he’d scream.

He and Gladio hadn’t talked since then. Nothing more than a “pass the steak sauce” or a grunted “sorry” bumping into him in the hall. Noct hated when Gladio was like this, all craggy and impossible like the stone cliffs off Caem, standing tall, imposing judgment.

Gladio blamed him for Ignis.

It fucking sucked.

Still, having Luna here, with them, _alive_ made the worst so much better. She was just as he remembered her, serious and soft-spoken but with laughter in her eyes just for him, on those occasions he took her off guard with a joke—rare, these days—or an honest observation. Her face was different, childish softness gone, and her hair; but the way her smile peeked through and then bloomed like a sweet, white flower or a spark of mischief, that was his Luna all over. It was almost like the last twelve years hadn’t happened.

But they had. Noct felt the ring’s weight in his pocket even when Luna gave him her truest smile, her most angel-wicked. And even when they were together—especially when they were together—he felt the horrible, yawning absence of his father.

He missed him every day. Especially when he was with Luna, Noct felt like he could look back and see him there, watching them over his shoulder with that weary smile of his, leaning on a cane he shouldn’t have needed at barely fifty—imagined his ghost as he was the last time Noct saw him, grey-haired and worn away like ancient stone, part of the Citadel, the legacy his son was leaving behind. Even now, that steady gaze lingered on his back, so real Noct refused to turn and break the illusion, to remind himself his dad was gone. Hard to remember, with history so palpable between him and Luna.

It figured, breaking into all those royal tombs, looting phantom blades from his forebears, he’d become some kind of haunted prince.

But just because Dad was the ever-present catoblepas in the room didn’t mean he didn’t treasure every moment he had with Luna. Every day, she got a little better: She needed less medicine, the gash in her side was mending. She was still weak, and the doctors murmured things to Weskham when Noct was out of earshot, but she wasn’t so pale anymore from blood loss. And every time she saw Noct, she sat up a little straighter and smiled.

It felt like coming home.

Ignis was still healing, too, and even though the news of Luna’s “death” had been all but confirmed by now, Altissia’s gates were still under close Imperial watch. Ravus wasn’t an idiot. So, stuck, Noct rose with the sun—the Gods-damned sun—every day to help Luna with her PT, just as, once, she’d coaxed him through his.

This morning, she was dressed down—way down—in his white T-shirt and Prompto’s cargo civvies, pant hems rolled up, hair held off her neck in a messy bun. It occurred to Noct that not once in all the years he’d known her had he ever seen Luna not dressed to be the Oracle. She looked… small, in his and Prompto’s clothes. Human.

“What do you think? Can you make it?” he teased, standing just a step and a half in front of her with his arms outstretched in case she needed catching.

She blew air through her lips and shook her hair from her eyes, fixing him with a look that meant _trouble._ Then she took those last steps and finished her first long walk without her canes, slumping into his arms. With an exhausted laugh, she pushed herself back with just her hand on his chest, cheeks pink with exertion. “I’ve crossed wider gulfs than this for greater reward, Prince Noctis.”

He tried to look offended. “‘Greater?’”

“Oooooh, she got you there, Noct!”

Noct drew a loaf of bread from thin air and hurled it at Prompto’s head, who cackled and drew the door to their suite closed as a shield. The loaf dissolved back into crystals before it hit the ground. Noct wasn’t going to waste perfectly good sandwich bread, not when Iggy—

Pang of guilt. No. He didn’t want to think about Iggy.

Prompto peeked back into their suite, hair already styled up, way too chipper for the hour. “Oho. Aaaam I interrupting something?”

“Yes,” muttered Noct as Luna pulled away. Betrayed by his best friend.

“You, Prompto?” Luna offered Prompto that sweet smile of hers, hands clasped before her. “You could never be an interruption, or at least you would ever be a welcome one. You brighten every room you enter. How are you this morning?”

Star-struck, Prompto tilted his head until it hit the doorframe, all dreamy-eyed. “Swell…”

Wow, smooth. Noct rubbed under his nose and repeated “swell” under his breath until Luna flicked his arm with a fingernail. “Ow, Luna!”

She gave him a sidelong look before sliding her arm through his. He blinked, but, oh. She was leaning on him. Maybe the morning’s activity had tired her out. She rested her head on his shoulder as she continued to talk to Prompto. “You’re up early. Do you have plans for the day?”

“Uh, well, not _plans_ per se.” Prompto rubbed one finger beneath his nose, glancing back down the hall. “But Ignis is waiting for Gladio to wake up, and he suggested I, uh. Take a walk. Practice my photography skills. You know. Give them a minute or sixty.”

“Huh?” Noct couldn’t think of a reason Ignis would need to talk to Gladio alone. “Why?”

Prompto winced and crossed his arms, rolling his head from side to side. “We-ell, I don’t know exactly, but he had his daggers out and was kind of playing with them so I figured maybe I should leave and not come back for… a while.”

They were all silent for a beat.

“Rest in peace, Gladio,” Noct said, bowing his head in respect for the dead. At his side, Luna lost her concerned look and covered her mouth, eyes crinkled like she was laughing.

It was better, having Luna around to laugh at his jokes. With her, he could ignore the knot of worry in his chest. What was Ignis up to?

“We hardly knew ‘im,” Prompto intoned piously, going along with it, thank the gods. “What about you guys? Doing your PT?”

Luna smiled and patted Noct’s arm, her sturdy crutch. “We’ve actually just finished.” Reminded, Noctis summoned her wheelchair, which she sank into gratefully. Prompto hurried to help her and she patted his hand. “If you don’t mind waiting a moment while I freshen up, perhaps the three of us could break our fasts together? I’m afraid I’ve worked up something of an appetite, and I, at least, would be honored to spend more time with my personal savior.”

Prompto turned several distinct shades of red and stammered something unintelligible, hiding half his face. Noct rolled his eyes.

“Don’t think that’s what Luna meant by ‘brightening up the room,’ Prompto,” he said, then ducked away from Prompto’s embarrassed swatting. Man, he couldn’t help himself. Having had Luna all to himself for so long, even through the book—perhaps _because_ it was through their book, passing secrets to one another for their eyes alone—every time she paid attention to someone else, he felt like a petty, petulant child. As if to make up for his private moment of envy, he play-punched Prompto’s arm and Prompto relented, apparently satisfied with the exchange.

“Breakfast sounds good,” Noct decided. “Let’s do it.” A thought occurred to him, and he nodded at the window, with sunlight slipping in like a soft halo around the drawn shades. “We should eat outside. Make it like a pancake picnic.”

Luna’s fingers stilled on the arms of her chair. “…Do you think that wise, Noctis?” she asked, and even though it wasn’t, he saw her gaze flicker towards the light with longing. It’d been weeks since they’d been able to so much as open a window for fear someone might see her.

“Why not?” Noct replied, and subtly nudged Prompto’s heel with his boot.

“Uh—yeah!” Prompto glanced quickly at him, seeking confirmation, and Noct raised his eyebrows and tilted his head meaningfully towards Luna and the window. For once, Prompto caught on fast and grinned. “I mean, Noct and I used to sneak past paparazzi to the arcade all the time! We’re total pros at avoiding detection.” He jerked a thumb at his chest. “Stick with us, and you got nothing to worry about, Lad—L-Luna.”

Like a tidal wave against a candle, Luna’s sparkling smile wiped out the little flare of jealousy between Noct’s ribs. “Then, since you two are such _experienced_ delinquents, I will gladly follow your lead.”

\--

“They’ve gone out,” Ignis informed Gladio when he rolled out of bed and started towards the door to check on them.

Gladio turned, hoping against hope that Iggy’s sight had returned, that he would be sitting in the armchair with the newspaper in his hands, treating the miracle like it was no big deal, like always—but no such luck. Ignis was in the armchair, yes, a cup of Ebony on the coffee table before him, but he was running his fingers over the flat of a dagger with his face lifted towards the wall, unseeing.

He grunted and tried to swallow the disappointment of reality. “Noct check in before he left or something?”

“Prompto, actually. They’re taking Lunafreya out for a picnic.”

“Are you kidding me?” Iggy seemed unbothered, but maybe Gladio was bothered enough for the both of them. He’d seen hardly hide or hair of the prince since the Rite of Leviathan, always off with Luna, never thinking maybe Iggy needed him just as much, if not more, than she did. Running away from the consequences of doing what he _had_ to do. Acting like a child, not a man. Not a king. “At a time like this? And you let them?”

Iggy turned blank, dark lenses his way. “I can hardly fault them for seeking new means of securing breakfast, Gladio.”

It hurt, it burned. He wanted to break down a wall with his fists. Gladio forced a breath out through his nose and paced away from the door, running a hand back through his hair. It was still tangled from sleep. He felt tangled, too. “The hell? The place is still crawling with Niffs—”

“Who have found themselves in rather a state of disarray since their High Commander was sentenced to death late last night,” finished Ignis.

A beat.

“Ravus?”

“Mm.”

“But why—?”

“For failing to stop the Hydraean’s rampage, I believe.” Iggy reached out carefully for his coffee, found it, but then just held it between his hands. Gladio wondered how long he’d been awake, wondered if the coffee was still warm. “For allowing the destruction of so much of Altissia, and the death of the Oracle.”

Gladio let that sink in. “So the Empire’s lapdog becomes their public scapegoat,” he summed up. After another pause, he asked in a lower voice, “Does she know?”

“No. It isn’t yet public knowledge, and I… thought it best to wait to break the news until after they return.” With a sigh, Ignis set his coffee down once more and bent over his knees, clasping his hands together. “According to Weskham’s information, it appears Ravus is on the run and many of the Imperial troops have been called back to Niflheim. Those who remain have focused their reduced strength on the gates.”

So long as Noct and company stayed away, then, they’d be safe. Safer. Gladio snorted. “That’s still no reason to let ‘em go running off whenever they want. Someone else could recognize them, word could get out—”

“Lady Lunafreya has been held captive in her own home for half of her life,” Ignis interrupted him again, soft and matter-of-fact. “At times, by her own brother, and all in the name of her ‘safety.’”

He wasn’t going to think about Iris in the same situation. Wasn’t going to think about Luna younger than Iris was now—orphaned, like Iris was, now, because the Emperor wanted that Six-damned Crystal. With a curse caught in the back of his throat, Gladio uncrossed his arms and started pacing again. “That’s no reason to let them just run off whenever they want, playing at kids on summer break when half the city’s in ruins because of us.”

“I’d say the Empire had more of a hand in it,” replied Ignis, deceptively mild, but Gladio didn’t have the patience for warning signs right now.

“There won’t be any end to it until we _make_ an end, Iggy. Until Noct drags his royal ass up to the Emperor’s front door and takes back what’s his.” He spun to look at Ignis, then turned away once more, not wanting to see. “Until then, every second we waste is more ground—more _innocent people_ lost. Or hurt.”

Somehow, even though Ignis was—was _blind_ , to face facts—that the most capable, dependable person he’d ever met, Kings be damned, Glaive and Guard rot in hell, was irrevocably _incapacitated_ —Gladio could feel his eyes on him, observing, analyzing, passing judgment.

“I was the one to suggest Prompto spend some time away from the hotel today,” Ignis finally said, “with the expectation he would not choose to do so alone. I’d like a word with you, Gladio.”

It was not, in any way, a request. Gladio ran his tongue over his teeth, feeling like someone’d just sized him up for a fight, then planted his rear in the seat across from Iggy. “Fine. A word.”

Ignis said, oh so drily, “Your generosity on this matter is noted and appreciated.” He sat up in his chair, back straight, shoulders level, and crossed one long leg primly over the other, the picture of Insomnian competence. Of Insomnian excellence. “To drive straight to the point: You’re acting like a child. Stop it.”

Gladio froze. “What— _me?”_

“You’re avoiding Noct.” Ignis cut off his outraged splutter by lifting his chin and doing that thing where he raised his voice without yelling. “The tension between you has gotten so high, Prompto can barely finish half his meals when we eat together. And with my… current state,” he said, adjusting his glasses, “and the near miss we had with Lunafreya, both our party and our king have suffered a great blow. We simply cannot afford another of our pillars to weaken right now.”

“You’re—you’re calling me weak?” Gladio repeated incredulously.

He couldn’t read Iggy’s expression. “I’m saying you are not performing your assigned role in this group to the best of your ability, and that Noct—”

“To hell with Noct!”

Gladio was on his feet, fists clenched at his side, chest hot, and the way Ignis just looked up at him, unseeing and unsurprised, did nothing to break the sudden terrible pressure inside him, bursting to go somewhere, to hit something.

“Noct’s the one avoiding _you,”_ he blurted out, briefly, traitorously not caring how it landed. He flung an arm Ignis couldn’t appreciate towards the window. “He’s the one who… His Majesty, the Citadel— _Jared.”_ The _Amicitias’_ butler. Not Lucis’s. Not Noct’s. “All these people whose homes and lives are just rubble, back in Insomnia or under the sea—the _whole world’s_ given up so much for our so-called ‘king,’ and for what?”

He slammed his hands on the coffee table and only felt guilty, not satisfied, when Ignis jumped, but he was in this now and he would go all the way. “So he can go on some damned brunch dates with his girlfriend? What about what _she_ gave up so he could do his fuckin’ job? What about y—”

“Gladio,” Ignis cut in, voice sharp as steel, but Gladio wasn’t done.

“No, damn it, Iggy, someone’s gotta say it! _What about you?”_

The words were out. He couldn’t take them back. He stood there, bowed over the coffee table, and then swore again and slumped back into the chair, rubbing his face.

“It isn’t as though I haven’t given thought to my situation,” Iggy began. He was trying to be gentle around what had to have hurt him, and Gladio hated it.

“Didn’t say you didn’t. Said you haven’t said a damn word about it to His Highness.”

“I will when he’s ready,” Ignis promised, and he must have heard the displeased click of Gladio’s teeth, because his chin dropped a bit. “And… when I am ready as well.” For once, Gladio was reminded that Ignis was younger than him, only twenty-two. Was reminded that they were none of them fully grown. “In the meantime, I ask you not to pressure him, certainly not on my account. However Noct feels about my injuries and what he chooses to do once the lasting repercussions become clear is between him and me.”

It took some of the wind out of his sails, seeing Iggy even a little vulnerable, a little cast down. “We’re a team,” Gladio said, hoping that agreeing with Iggy’s earlier statement would ease the ache of all this shit. “What happens with one of us affects all of us.”

Ignis breathed out. “All the same, I’d prefer you didn’t fight my battles for me.”

The most capable man on Eos. Gladio could imagine how broken up he must’ve been to be so helpless without his eyes. Had to imagine it; Iggy never let the whole of his feelings through to the surface. “Sure.”

“And I’ll thank you not to use my troubles as a platform for you to vent your frustrations on Noct.”

Had he just been feeling sorry for Iggy? Not anymore. “It’s my job to push him.”

“It’s your job to push him forward, yes.” Ignis’s mouth was set in a firm line. “It is not your job to push him _away.”_

Gladio released a tired groan of frustration and disbelief. “What the hell, Iggy, I’m sick of fighting about this,” he complained. “He’s _King._ He doesn’t have room in his life anymore to run away from his problems. He’s got to face reality and take responsibility—”

“For his people. Yes, I know.” He knew better than anyone, said Ignis’s face, and Gladio decided not to grouse at him for interrupting him so damn much. “Gladio, what’s changed?”

What? “You’re gonna have to explain that one, Iggy.”

Ignis shifted, and a lock of his hair, usually perfectly spiked, fell out of formation across his forehead. “This… _I_ am not the first casualty of this battle,” he said, “for him or for you. You both lost your fathers in Insomnia. Your homes. The lives you were meant to lead.”

Gladio’s hands balled into fists once more. “Not just us,” he replied, voice low, watching Ignis’s face.

“I’m trying to figure out why _now_ this has become such an issue for the two of you,” Ignis said crisply, leaning forward. “I know you’ve long had your differences, and we’ve both criticized this escapist behavior of his in the past, but before, you always knew what to say to rile him up, not tear him down. You’ve always been his older brother. Not his taskmaster.”

It stung. He wasn’t Noct’s older brother, he was Iris’s—Iris, left to take care of the house in Caem, left to manage with the remnants of the Crownsguard, to look after Talcott the way he should have been looking after her. Instead he was an ocean away, stuck with a selfish, spoiled sprig of a king who couldn’t take his eyes off the Oracle long enough to ask after his friend, the one who’d been at his side since he was three years old, the only one with the patience and talent to pick up after him and scout out before him, taking care of every mortal need he had so that the future king could focus on—

Focus on...

“Do you remember King Regis’s last request of us, Gladio?”

Ignis’s words cut through his thoughts but then stuck there like a barb.

“He asked us not to guide his son, but to remain by his side.”

“How are we supposed to do that,” Gladio bit out, throat suddenly tight, “when he’s zapping around hundreds of feet up in the air like a damned pinball with ghosts and gods at his beck and call, and we can’t even protect ourselves down on the ground?”

At that, Ignis was silent for some time.

“So that’s what it is,” he said at last.

“He’s got to be able to handle himself up there without us,” Gladio said, feeling hollow. He hung his head and huffed a laugh stripped of all humor.

“Some use I am, the Shield of the fuckin’ King.”

\--

It hurt, seeing elegant, airy Altissia in shambles like this.

Some of the evacuees had decided to settle elsewhere. Accordan cities whose names all sounded warm and exotic, some of the southern territories of Niflheim proper—even Lestallum, for a few. But many of them had returned. All of them were hard at work digging out shops, demolishing walls and statues that couldn’t be saved to make room for what could be rebuilt.

Prompto took a picture from the bench where he, Noct, and Luna sat, finishing off their simple brunch.

Luna must have been beautiful in any garb, in any light, but in the sun, she was radiant. Even in the unattractive wheelchair, with her hair tucked into Noct’s stupid fishing cap, wearing a shirt way too big for her and Prompto’s spare pants, he’d believe she walked among the gods.

He took another picture of her, even though his camera was full of her already: smiling, laughing, eating, looking at Noct with longing and gratitude softening those beautiful eyes, clear as crystal.

They were perfect for each other.

Everyone could tell Noct was head over heels for her, but seeing them together, heads close, sometimes laughing over something they’d done as children—maybe Noct brought out something sweeter and more human in Luna, but Luna brought something out of Noct, too. He sat a little straighter, spoke from somewhere deeper in his chest, watched her with eyes Prompto might have sworn had never seemed sleepy.

For the first time, Prompto could see something of the king in Noct. Not King Regis—there’d always been something of His Majesty in Noct—but something king _ly._ Regal.

Majestic.

The atmosphere wasn’t great, what with the scars of Leviathan’s rampage all around—cracked stone, flood stains—but every time Noct and Luna met each other’s eyes, Prompto could feel the world become lighter, could feel Eos’s net goodness increase. If they hadn’t seen each other in twelve years, this was like their first date, right?

“I’m gonna take some pictures,” he told them, picking himself up and taking a hunk of cheese. “Don’t move, you two! You’re gonna be my landmark so I don’t get lost.”

“Fine, whatever,” Noct said with a good-natured wave, not even opening his eyes as he chewed. Luna was, of course, more polite, nodding and smiling at him.

“I’ve always enjoyed your photography, Prompto. I look forward to seeing more of it in person.”

He could feel the warmth rush to his face, lifting him off his feet to float among the clouds. _Lady Lunafreya liked his photos._ “I—that’s—th, thank you! Uh, is there anything in particular you’d like to see?”

“Careful,” Noct murmured to her. “You’ll have to sit through fifty pictures of the same thing if you give him anything.”

“Hey!”

But Luna was laughing, and the sound was like a perfect, lovely bell. “I trust your eye for beauty to be far more developed than mine,” she said, eyes twinkling with her smile. “I leave the subject matter to your best judgment.”

That was so much nicer than Noct’s ‘nothing in particular, I guess.’ Prompto saluted with his cheese. “O-okay! Leave it to me!”

“Dork,” said Noct under his breath, but his eyes were crinkled a little, too. Prompto grinned, happy to see them in good spirits, and took off towards what was left still intact of Altissia’s beautiful, utterly confusing maze of stairs and bridges.

Without Pryna to guide him this time, he ended up horrendously lost, but that was all right. There wasn’t, after all, that much of Altissia remaining to get lost _in,_ and he had his cell phone.

Then he remembered they’d never found Ardyn’s body.

He slowed to a standstill, cold in the shadow of Altissia’s high buildings, and considered going back, telling them there wasn’t much to see after all among the wreckage. But, wait, no. This was the only time Noct and Luna had to themselves that they could be alone for sure. He couldn’t mess it up for them.

Deciding to take his time and stick to the sunny, friendly parts of the city, Prompto walked up and down the storefronts and hotels, searching for those painful pieces of beauty and loss that remained. A winged statue still reaching out to grant benediction to weary travelers. A couple helping each other salvage their belongings, leaning together when they found something, asking do you remember, do you remember? A group of children playing hacky-sack in the shadow of a fallen house as someone’s grandmother watched over them, wiry and alert, a basket full of fruit in her lap. Everywhere, people at work on repairs.

Altissia would never be the same. But maybe it would still _be._ It was nice to hope, at least.

Somehow, he ended up in a tower above and across a waterway from Noct and Luna. He considered waving and shouting to them, but from this distance, they looked close. “Don’t ruin it,” Prompto whispered to himself and snapped a few pictures, trying to capture the strange privacy of their public outing.

A cat on the sill beside him flicked its tail, glared at him a moment, and then resumed staring out the window, indifferent.

“Those two are gonna save the world,” Prompto told it, beaming. It continued to ignore him and he took that as license to keep talking. “Look at them. They’re so good. They’re totally in love and now that they’re together, everything’s gonna change.”

He looked at them through his camera, focused the lens—caught Luna putting a dab of whipped cream from her coffee on Noct’s nose and then laughing behind her hand. _Click._

Prompto smiled down at the resulting picture, at Luna’s flyaway hair bouncing and Noct’s sour, put-upon, adoring expression.

“Man, I’d do anything to be with them like this forever.”

Yellow eyes were suddenly staring at him intently and he started, but it was just the cat, all crept up close and sniffing at him. He exhaled, then realized what it must’ve wanted and chuckled at himself.

“I dunno if cats should have cheese, but here! I’m not that hungry. Cheese is super fattening, anyway, even if it _is_ really good cheese. But cats don’t have to worry about that, right? Consider it an offering.”

He unwrapped it, put it on the sill, and watched the cat from the corner of his eye, ostensibly busy with his camera. Beside him, the cat scrutinized the cheese, pawed at it gingerly, and then went to munchtown on it. Prompto smiled to himself and took a picture of the cat, too—so elegant, all slender lines, with sleek fur the kind of grey fancy people call blue.

“Wonder if Luna likes cats,” he said aloud, and the cat flicked its ears back, annoyed with all his chatter, but let him keep it company until the cheese was gone.

\--

Down below, Lunafreya put a dainty forkful of familiar-smelling opera cake in her mouth and gasped softly.

Ulwaat berries—and all at once she was in Tenebrae, ten years old, overbright with exhaustion but unwilling to ask her mother if she could leave the party when she’d wanted so desperately to go. She hung onto her mother’s hand, standing almost within the circle of her skirts, drowning in a sea of politicians and courtiers, laughter floating above her like distant sea birds.

Her mother caught her stifling a yawn and stroked her hair, reaching up to the dessert table and handing Lunafreya a new plate.

“Just a little longer, light of my life,” she said softly, placing a pastry on the plate and a kiss on Luna’s crown.

She didn’t realize she was crying until Noctis reached towards her face, brushed the silent tear from her cheek with the pad of his thumb.

“Noctis… I’m sorry.” She tried to laugh, wiping her own fingertips under her eyes. “I don’t know what’s come over me. It’s only… It’s only that, even though so much has happened, so much of the world has crashed around us, to be here with you, eating—eating _cake_ for breakfast…”

Lunafreya trailed off as Noctis’s palm cradled the side of her face.

“I know,” he said, his eyes a clear, unbelievable blue framed by dark lashes, shaded by dark hair. “I... Luna…”

“I...” What was wrong with her? Her heart was full to bursting, and perhaps that was what it was, spilling over into water, here in this city on the sea. “To be with you, I could never even imagine...”

“Luna.”

He leaned in, stopped, watching her eyes, waiting for her sign—for her call. Her lips parted around a whisper.

“Noctis.”

Yes. Were she to live a thousand lifetimes, yes, every time.

Her companion, her prince, her king—the boy she’d loved from childhood, the man whose destiny she’d devoted her life to lightening, to making clear—Noctis, Noctis Lucis Caelum tipped her face so gently towards him, brought his own closer to her lips, and, sweetly, shyly, like the brush of feathered petals against her skin, kissed her.

There in the golden Altissian morning, caressed by the breeze off the sea, his shirt hanging off her frame, her hair bundled into his hat, tucked into a pocket of safety amidst a world gone mad, a city they’d helped destroy—there, leaning half out of her wheelchair, her eyelashes still wet with tears, Lunafreya Nox Fleuret ran fingertips along his collarbone and kissed him back.

When Noctis leaned back, mouth half-open as if in wonder, he was smiling, and his eyes were warm and deep, light on an ocean she’d never known.

“Luna,” he said one more time, tucking a stray strand of hair behind her ear, “this is all I’ve ever wanted.”

Unable to express the soaring of her heart, she laughed, and it spilled out of her like song—and if tears continued to spill as well, perhaps they, too, were a kind of music: an ode to day after the storm.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Would you believe that kiss almost didn't happen? It wasn't part of my outline, but I got through Prompto's piece, realized I didn't have a Luna POV section in here, and decided that was a terrible travesty I had to correct.
> 
> Anyway, now that I'm settled in Israel for the school year, hopefully I should be able to update a little more regularly. Fingers crossed!


End file.
